Tigerwave Networks
Your Friendly and Flexible
Web Hosting Provider
Phone: 206-774-9090
email: info@tigerwave.com
Tigerwave Networks
Your Friendly and Flexible
Web Hosting Provider
Phone: 206-774-9090
email: info@tigerwave.com
If you are already convinced that you should have a domain of your own and a web site, then feel free to skip ahead to the "Why Should You Use Tigerwave Networks?" section. On the other hand, you might find some new ideas for ways to leverage the Internet in the earlier sections.
If you're in a hurry, the bullet points below highlight some of the things you should consider. If you have time (and isn't your business worth a few minutes?), read on for more detail.
You may be thinking, "All I have right now is a phone number, and that works just fine." And it's true - many small businesses survive with no email address at all. But there is an opportunity lost: an opportunity to bring in more customers, and an opportunity to better serve the customers you already have.
If anyone has ever left you a voice message more complicated than "Hi, this is X, please call me back about Y at "ZZZ-ZZZ-ZZZZ" then you know that dealing with detailed information in voice mail can be a hassle. The same principle applies to messages that you leave for your customers as well. And if someone leaves you a long, rambling voice message with occasional bits of useful information sprinkled throughout, there's no easy way to skim it for the "good stuff" - you're stuck listening to the whole thing.
Maybe you use your cell phone as your business line. If your customers don't know that, they might try calling (perhaps expecting to leave a message) at any hour of the night. If you don't always remember to turn off the phone, then by now you've probably had at least a few calls come in at inconvenient hours. The customers who do think about it have probably sometimes not called you when it actually would have been fine, just because they didn't want to bother you "off-hours." And the list could go on...
In contrast, email has numerous advantages:
And of course, in this day and age, a significant portion of the population has email access. Many people will simply EXPECT to be able to communicate with you by email. Has anyone ever said, "What do you mean, you don't use email for your business?" If they haven't yet, they will - more people are on the Internet all the time, and the trend will surely continue. You never need to hear that question (again)!
Many small business owners have an email address like "joesflowershop@hotmail.com" or "baitbyfred@aol.com". And in many ways, those addresses work just fine. Of course, some have an address like "joe2663783@aol.com", which is a lot more error-prone...
But there is an opportunity being missed here, too. First impressions are very important, as are subtle messages about your business that your customers get in ways you may not have thought about. One of them is what's on your business card or brochure - specifically, your email address and web site. We'll talk about the web site in the next section.
The email address is an often-overlooked opportunity to make a positive impression on your potential customers. It may be that many of your customers will themselves have an email address at aol.com, hotmail.com, juno.com, or another site with a similar reputation. However, even most of those folks can recognize that if that's what YOUR email address looks like, then you're basically just another random person with an email address that it takes 5 minutes to set up. And the fact that you didn't bother to do any more than that sends a subtle message (even if it isn't true!) about your commitment to, and your attitude toward, your business.
In other words, they might get the idea that if you couldn't be bothered to set up a real domain for your business, you're not that serious about it - and maybe they'd rather use a business that's a little more serious, a little more established, a little more professional. Many people won't even think consciously about this, but it still subtly alters their impression of your business...and if they're trying to decide between you and a competitor, and one of you has a more professional appearance, that might tip the balance.
In contrast, if a potential customer sees that you have your own domain name, specific to your particular business (an email address like "Sally@InteriorsBySally.com"), then the impression they get is that you (and your business) are professional, serious about the business, in it for the long haul, and with-it rather than behind-the-times. Hopefully that's all true, but the key here is that the truth does not automatically translate into the perception of the customer - you need to make sure that they get the right idea about you. And this doesn't just apply to service-based businesses, either; a professional appearance implies high-quality, reliable products as well.
You can get a domain name for $20/year or less, and it takes minimal effort and know-how, and many of your potential customers know this. If they see that you couldn't be bothered to do that for your business, what would you EXPECT them to think?
Of course, just getting the domain name isn't quite enough. We here at Tigerwave have long ago lost count of the number of times we see a respectable domain name ("www.CarchariasLawServices.com") paired with the same sort of random email address we discussed above ("JimmySmitsRules721@hotmail.com"). This is like buying an advertisement and then leaving half the page blank - once you have the domain, there is no reason not to route your email through it. If your web/email hosting provider doesn't make that easy for you, then switch to one that does - like Tigerwave Networks! And in most modern email programs, it takes only a minor configuration change to get your outgoing email to match. You can do this even if for whatever reason you prefer to have all your email forwarded to your account at, say, Earthlink. Since Tigerwave provides everything you need for your email right on our servers, and in fact supports much more than most hosting providers, there is truly no reason to forward the email someplace else. Nonetheless, if that's what you want, it is very easy to set up.
As discussed above, you really should have your own domain name (like "DaveTheElectrician.com"). And of course once you do, people will expect there to be a web site associated with it, so you should do that, too. Now, for many small business owners, the thought of spending precious time on yet another thing - especially something that sounds like a big process, and something they don't know anything about - is intimidating. But there's no need to make a big project out of it. Some folks would have you believe that you need to spend many thousands of dollars to pay a professional web designer to set up a big, complicated web site with whizzy Flash graphics and other fancy stuff. In reality, for most small business owners, it's about communication with the customer - it's about content. If a potential or existing customer goes to your web site, they probably want some information. If they can find that information, then they're happy. And in fact, the less fancy junk that gets in their way in the process of finding the information, the better.
So that brings us to the next topic: what should be on your web site?
A lot depends on the nature of your business, but there are a few things that apply pretty much universally:
a. Contact/Location Information: this is one of the most important things to have on there, and it should be easy to find. For many people, it's a hassle to try to dig your phone number out of the phone book (and maybe you're not even listed the way they expect - Yellow Pages ads aren't cheap, and it can be hard to appear in all the right categories), and they may not remember your email address, but if they can remember the name of your business or domain name (which hopefully are very similar), they can find your web site, and then they have your address, phone number, email, and (if applicable) directions to your location. Don't miss that last one - be sure to provide clear directions from nearby major roads, ideally with a simplified map. Hours of business operation are also a very good thing to have here, and parking information is greatly appreciated in areas where parking can be difficult or expensive.
b. Brief information about your business: What do you do? How long have you been doing it? What's special about you? (Why should they use your products & services instead of your competitors?)
c. Customer testimonials: If you have some, post them (with the customer's permission if possible). If you don't have some, ask some recent happy customers (or less recent, very happy customers) to provide some - most people will happily support you if they feel you served them well. Don't have any (happy) customers yet? No problem - but try to find some and then get those testimonials up there. Dates (month and year, or at least year) are helpful to show that you've actually managed to make someone happy more recently than, say, 1997.
d. Information about and even pictures of you and your staff: Customers are more likely to go to a business that they feel comfortable with, feel a connection to - for instance, where they feel like they "know you." You can get a head start on that before they even walk through the door or pick up the phone! This could be your edge over your otherwise-similar competitors. For example, look at this web site: http://www.oohlashairdesign.com/ (Unfortunately, this site seems to be having some problems lately. Please note that they are not (yet!) a Tigerwave customer!) Note the brief biographies and photos of the employees. This is great!
Beyond that, information specific to your type of business can be helpful. Information about your products (ideally with pictures and prices) is great if practical. Tigerwave can help you with this process, or rent you a digital camera ($20 for 3 days, $5 each additional day) so you can do it yourself. Sometimes photos of the business owner and/or staff are helpful, especially for service businesses. Photos of completed work (especially combined with a testimonial) are great.
For a restaurant, the menu (with photos of each dish if possible) is an obvious item of interest to customers. Better yet, allow the customers to submit takeout orders online. Tigerwave can arrange for each order submitted to arrive on your fax machine or on your printer, automatically.
Many businesses (such as health care and other service providers) might provide scheduling information. Even better is a way for customers to check for available times and actually request one - this requires more setup work, of course.
Some examples (note that these are not currently Tigerwave customers, just sites that we've run across with good ideas):
Tigerwave Networks is a small business (like many of our customers). We plan to remain small so that our overhead is minimal, and we can focus on providing friendly, flexible, personal service at reasonable prices. We are local (if you are in the Seattle area), and can provide on-site support and assistance if needed. If you need some additional software package that we don't already have installed, just ask - we can probably add it for you. The big hosting services would just laugh at such a request (assuming their support staff could even understand it).
Part of our motivation for creating Tigerwave was frustration with the impersonal, inflexible structure of large hosting companies. Another part of it was to be able to leverage our low-overhead business model to provide low-cost web/email hosting to non-profits and other worthy causes whose hosting needs (like their resources) are modest.
If you like the idea of working with a local business that knows you by name, and whose staff is willing and able to go out of their way for a single customer (versus someplace where you're just customer # 371559 and the people you talk to on phone - if you can even get to a human at all - don't really care if you're happy or not), then please consider Tigerwave Networks for your hosting and web site design needs.
On the other hand, if you plan to use your web site in such a way that you will lose thousands of dollars every minute that the site is offline, then Tigerwave Networks is not the right choice for you. To truly guarantee that the site will be offline for no more than a few seconds per year takes a lot of expensive equipment, extra staff, contracts with upstream service providers, etc., and those costs have to be passed on to customers. That means high prices and/or a huge customer base, which in turn means that personalized service is impractical.
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